The Big Business Lark was a radio comedy

Radio comedy

Radio comedy, or comedic radio programming, is a radio broadcast that may involve sitcom elements, sketches and various types of comedy found on other media. It may also include more surreal or fantastic elements, as these can be conveyed on a small budget with just a few sound effects or some...

 sitcom of partly satirical

Satire

Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...

 form broadcast in 1969. It starred Jimmy Edwards

Jimmy Edwards

Jimmy Edwards DFC was an English comedic script writer and comedy actor on both radio and television, best known as Pa Glum in Take It From Here and as the headmaster 'Professor' James Edwards in Whack-O!-Biography:...

 and Frank Thornton

Frank Thornton

Frank Thornton is an English actor who is best known for playing Captain Peacock in Are You Being Served? and its sequel Grace & Favour and as Truly in Last of the Summer Wine.-Early life:...

 and was written by Laurie Wyman as a spin-off

Spin-off (media)

In media, a spin-off is a radio program, television program, video game, or any narrative work, derived from one or more already existing works, that focuses, in particular, in more detail on one aspect of that original work...

 from The Navy Lark

The Navy Lark

The Navy Lark was a radio sit-com about life aboard a British Royal Navy frigate named HMS Troutbridge, based in HMNB Portsmouth, though in series 1 and 2 the ship and crew were stationed offshore at an unnamed location known simply as "The Island." In series 2 this island was revealed to be...

, although no characters cross over between the two shows. In a sense, the spin-off element was in the The Foo Lark name format.

The show was set in the boardroom of fictional company Allied British Plastics and was concerned with the business machinations of the chairman (Edwards) and his son and deputy chairman (Thornton). Plots included landing an order to provide the Red Army

Red Army

The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...

 with plastic tents, a trip to America to make a good deal from another board member's mistake and an attempt to find a plastic novelty made by the firm for breakfast cereal boxes.

The comedy was more broad farce than subtle satire with Edwards playing a bluff, hard-drinking, chauvinist old rogue character and Thornton his more proper sidekick, analogous to the same role he played against Derek Francis

Derek Francis

Derek Francis was an English comedy and character actor.He was a regular in the Carry On film players, appearing in six of the films in the 1960s and 1970s. He appeared in Roger Corman's last film of his Edgar Allan Poe series The Tomb of Ligeia...

 in the other Navy Lark spin-off, The Embassy Lark

The Embassy Lark

The Embassy Lark was a radio comedy series broadcast from 1966 to 1968 as a spin-off from The Navy Lark. It was written by Lawrie Wyman and starred Frank Thornton and Derek Francis. It was produced by Sir Alistair Scott-Johnston...

.

Thirteen episodes were made and off-air recordings of all episodes are in circulation.